Traditional Owners and the Rural Fire Service have conducted the first demonstration cultural burn on a Crown reserve managed by Reflections Holidays at Scotts Head Reserve on the NSW Mid North Coast.
The burn on Gumbaynggirr Country was conducted by Yurruungga Aboriginal Corporation and the Rural Fire Service, with members of the community attending to witness the proceedings.
It was the first cultural burn at a Reflections holiday park and formed part of the organisation’s second Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP), which includes a commitment to work with Traditional Owners to create opportunities to heal Country across the Crown land reserves in its care.
Reflections Holidays is a Category One Crown land manager and manages 40 holiday parks and 45 public reserves across NSW.
Reflections CEO Nick Baker said the organisation operated across 12 First Nations and the Scotts Head burn represented an important step in its reconciliation commitments.
“Reflections manages 40 holiday parks and cares for 45 public reserves spanning more than 10,000 hectares and as a Crown Land manager we regularly partner with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to share and celebrate their culture with our guests to build awareness and respect that moves us towards our vision for reconciliation,” Baker said.
“Among the actions in our second Innovate RAP is to identify and seek to partner with Traditional Custodians to develop plans to protect and manage Country within our reserves, and we are seeing this take place at Scotts Head, thanks to the hard work of our Aboriginal Engagement Officer, our staff and the Yurruungga Aboriginal Corporation.”
Yurruungga Aboriginal Corporation CEO Dean Kelly said the cultural burning was ‘significant’ and it was the first time the community would be able to watch proceedings.
“Scotts Head is a very significant area to us because it connects to our Creation stories. We haven’t seen this area burnt in a long time and to put fire back on Country is not just about nurturing the biodiversity and ecosystem, it’s about honouring our cultural connections,” Kelly said.
“During the cultural exchange, we are burning along our songlines, which starts at Guyra at Wattle Ridge, and we are finishing at Scotts Head, where our Creation story comes in.”
Kelly said the cultural burning honoured traditions thousands of years old. At Scotts Head, those traditions were connected to the Creation story of the Dungiirr brothers, or Koala Brothers, encompassing nearby mountain ranges, the sea, headland and inland areas.
“The cultural burn is more than just about putting in fire on Country; it’s a combined method of cool burning methodologies and indigenous traditional ecological knowledge. By using these knowledge systems of Traditional Owners, we can use fire to help revitalise and rejuvenate Country types at appropriate times via appropriate use of fire,” Kelly said.
Kelly said the cultural burn delivered traditional benefits for Country as well as contemporary benefits for those involved.
“We are not just burning; it allows us to connect with Country and release stress with our self and emotionally detach from other things that are going on in our world.”
He said Yurruungga Aboriginal Corporation was grateful for the support of Reflections Holidays, the RFS and Nambucca Shire Council.
Baker said lessons from the Scotts Head cultural burn would help inform future cultural burns at other Reflections parks across NSW.
“Reflections will continue to support Aboriginal-owned and led organisations to deliver programs on Country that will nurture the skills of Reflections staff in traditional land management practices,” he said.
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